Much like ‘All Them Horses’ and ’Deny Deny Deny’, Noah Kahan had been teasing ‘Spoiled’ for a long time before releasing it as part of his fourth studio album, The Great Divide.

We first started hearing clips and live performances of ‘Spoiled’ in 2023, with Kahan sharing slightly modified renditions of the heartfelt track throughout subsequent years. It finds him in a typically and captivatingly self-aware mode, envisioning a day when he and his wife have children, and wondering how they will perceive him.

‘Spoiled’, which Kahan co-produced with Aaron Dessner, begins with an intricate instrumental - much like other enchanting slow-burners such as ‘End of August’ and ‘23’. For the first portion of the track, it's just Kahan's evocative vocals combining with an atmospheric, ethereal acoustic guitar, before the song gradually intensifies.

Kahan's vocal treatment throughout the hook is stunning, with he and Dessner layering his delivery and drenching it in reverb to help give the track an added sense of emotional weight.

A crucial device that Kahan employs throughout The Great Divide is that of singing about himself from the perspective of other people. On ‘Spoiled’, he imagines the day he has children, and wonders whether they will want to emulate him and be like their dad. He comes to the heartbreaking conclusion that they'll aspire to “be him”, but they won't want to be as exhausted and overworked as he is.

The opening verse finds Kahan reflecting on his love-hate relationship with touring, sadly quipping that the people at the morgue should be notified because he'll be out on the road ‘killing himself’ again every night in order to put on a brilliant show.

Then, the second verse feels especially pertinent:

“Yes I'm betting on the north
To drag my ass back down to Earth
'Cause where I'm from and what I'm worth
Have gotten too damn intertwined

If I'm gone this time next year
If I inhaled the smoke and smashed the mirrors
Fuck it, I might even disappear
I hope you've had a decent time”

The first part seemingly touches on Kahan's decision to move back to Vermont after getting burnt out from living in Nashville - something he explores throughout his 2026 Netflix documentary, Out of Body. He hopes that moving back up North to his beloved home-state will help to ground him and bring him back down to Earth.

Then, the line about inhaling “the smoke” and smashing “the mirrors” feels like a subtle dig at the music industry, dismissing a lot of elements of fame and success as being nothing more than “smoke and mirrors”, i.e. false and superficial. He decides to dissipate the smoke by breathing it in and destroy all the mirrors, leaving only his authentic, true self, before hinting at stepping away from the spotlight.

As part of his official The Great Divide album announcement, Kahan shed some illuminating light on what this body of work represents to him, “From a long silence forms a divide, a great expanse demanding attention. I stare across it. I see old friends, my father, my mother, my siblings, my younger self, the great state of Vermont. I want to scream these feelings, to gesticulate wildly at the figures on the other side, but my voice has grown hoarse and muted after years of climbing a ladder towards the wild, spiraling dreams that have materialized in front of me”.

The Vermont native offers insight into his creative process, “Instead, I wrote them down next to a piano in Nashville, next to a pond in Guilford Vermont, in a legendary studio in upstate New York, on a farm with a firetower in Only, Tennessee. The songs are the words I would say if I could. They are the fears I dance with in the moments before I drift off to sleep. The music here is my best attempt to delve deeper into the people, places, and feelings that have made me who I am. I am grateful for all of it, for all of you, for listening to them, if you choose to do so”.

Kahan has repeatedly touched on how challenging he found the writing process for The Great Divide, as the pressure to outdo his magnum opus, Stick Season, weighed on him, something he explored in-depth in his 2026 Netflix documentary, Out of Body. During an interview with Zach Sang, he reflected on how he managed to overcome his writers’ block, “It was a hugely cathartic experience. I had been so stressed and so lost and was literally thinking about quitting and going to work at my golf course as a divot repair person”, adding, “The Great Divide for me, I’m so proud of, because not only did it come out of a time of great pressure and expectation. I felt like I was fully able to say what I wanted to say in the songs”.

“Gambling with the sun
On which one of us dies young
I ain't afraid to hold the gun
If it leads to me the safe
Tell the fellas at the morgue
That I'm heading back on tour
Gonna put them boys to work
Wipe your hands and wash your face

-

I'm filling every pause
I'm speaking when I know something
It's anything I want
It's anything I want

-

Just so my children get spoiled when they get old
So they can fuck up all they want and blame it all on their dad
So they can watch me go to work, fall asleep on the couch
They'll say, "I wanna be you, but I don't wanna be that"
They'll say, "I wanna be you, but I don't wanna be that"

-

Yes I'm betting on the north
To drag my ass back down to Earth
'Cause where I'm from and what I'm worth
Have gotten too damn intertwined

-

If I'm gone this time next year
If I inhaled the smoke and smashed the mirrors
Fuck it, I might even disappear
I hope you've had a decent time

-

I'm filling every pause
I'm speaking when I know something
It's anything I want
It's anything I want

-

Just so my children get spoiled when they get old
So they can fuck up all they want and blame it all on their dad
So they can watch me go to work, fall asleep on the couch
They'll say, "I wanna be you, but I don't wanna be that"
They'll say, "I wanna be you, but I don't wanna be that"

-

Gonna be rich
In our own way
I swear you're gonna get it, kid
Someday
Someday
Someday

-

I'm filling every pause
I'm speaking when I know something
It's anything I want
It's anything I want”

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Noah Kahan

Artist